Human adaptation to climate change: An introduction to the ...

S P E C I A L I S S U E AR T I C L E

Human adaptation to climate change: An introductionto the special issue

Anne C. Pisor1,2 | James H. Jones3

1Department of Anthropology,Washington State University, Pullman,Washington2Department of Human Behavior,Ecology, & Culture, Max Planck Institutefor Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig,Germany3Department of Earth System Science,Stanford University, Stanford, California

CorrespondenceAnne C. Pisor, Department ofAnthropology, Washington StateUniversity, Pullman, WA 99164-4910.Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Objectives: Despite our focus on adaptation and human responses to climate,

evolutionary and biological anthropologists (EBAs) are largely absent from

conversations about contemporary “climate-change adaptation,” a term popu-

lar in other disciplines, the development world, and related policy decisions.

EBAs are missing a big opportunity to contribute to impactful, time-sensitive

applied work: we have extensive theoretical and empirical knowledge perti-

nent to conversations about climate-change adaptation and to helping support

communities as they cope. This special issue takes a tour of EBA contributions

to our understanding of climate-change adaptation, from data on past and con-

temporary human communities to theoretically informed predictions about

how individuals and communities will respond to climate change now and in

the future. First, however, we must establish what we mean by “climate

change” and “adaptation,” along with other terms commonly used by EBAs;

review what EBAs know about adaptation and about human responses to cli-

mate change; and identify just a few topics EBAs study that are pertinent to

ongoing conversations about climate-change adaptation. In this article, we do

just that.

Conclusion: From our work on energy use to our work on demography, sub-

sistence, social networks, and the salience of climate change to local communi-

ties, EBAs have an abundance of data and theoretical insights to help inform

responses to contemporary climate change. We need to better reach the cli-

mate community and general public with our contributions.

The Canadian speculative-fiction author, MargaretAtwood, suggested that climate change is not simply cli-mate change; it's everything change.1 Climate change isthe central challenge to humanity of the 21st century.Concerned with how humans will cope with climatechange, climate researchers, development partners, andpolicymakers (henceforth, the climate community)increasingly refer to “climate-change adaptation,” a

phrase that loosely means reducing exposure to the nega-tive consequences of climate change. Evolutionary andbiological anthropologists (EBAs) have a long history ofstudying human-environment interactions and adapta-tion; in line with the original meaning in biology, wegenerally understand adaptation to mean increasing thefit between an organism and its environment. However,despite our investment in the study of adaptation and of

Received: 2 August 2020 Revised: 5 October 2020 Accepted: 16 October 2020

DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.23530

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2020 The Authors. American Journal of Human Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Am J Hum Biol. 2020;e23530. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ajhb 1 of 11

https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23530

human-environment interactions more broadly, EBAsare largely absent from conversations and policy deci-sions pertinent to climate-change adaptation. What doEBAs know that would be relevant to the climate com-munity as they make decisions about how to support vul-nerable populations coping with climate change? Whatdata do we already have that are applicable? How can webetter collect climate-change-relevant data going for-ward? Highlighting the pertinence of an anthropologicalunderstanding of adaptation, existing anthropologicaldata about human responses to climate, and ways for-ward, this special issue begins to answer these questions.

In this introductory article, we review concepts thatwill be used throughout this special issue, including whatwe mean by “climate change” and “adaptation”; brieflyintroduce the role of climate change in shaping humanevolution; and identify some of the major topics studiedby EBAs that are relevant to the climate community, pro-viding examples from contributions in this issue. Weclose by providing a short overview of strategies thatEBAs can use to better engage with the climate commu-nity, strategies that we cover in more detail in a large col-laborative piece (Jones et al. a, this issue).

1 | WHAT IS CLIMATE CHANGE?

In common usage, the phrase “climate change” hasbecome conflated with anthropogenic climate change—the role of human activity in contemporary climatechange. Broadly writ, however, climate change refers tochanges in the distributional properties (e.g., mean, vari-ance) of climate characteristics like temperature and pre-cipitation that persist across decades (see Glossary; Field,Barros, Mach, & Mastrandrea, 2014). Because precipita-tion is related to temperature, scientists often focus onchanges in global temperature as an indicator of climatechange. (If the focus is on increases in average globaltemperature, this is sometimes called “global warming.”)Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have an outsized impact onglobal temperatures by preventing heat from escapingthe Earth's atmosphere, an effect called “the greenhouseeffect”; because of this, atmospheric CO2 is often used asa proxy for average global temperatures. As evidenced byCO2 and other indicators, climate change has character-ized all of Earth's history (Fletcher, Brentnall, Anderson,Berner, & Beerling, 2008). It is a product of myriad pro-cesses, including features of the Earth's orbit, tectonicactivity, and asteroid impacts (Cronin, 2009). However,there is scientific consensus for the large role of humanactivity in climate change since at least 1970 (Rosenzweiget al., 2008). Suggestive evidence points to anthropogeniceffects on global climate by 1600 or earlier (Lewis &

Maslin, 2015), though substantial uncertainty remains inthe precise timing (Zalasiewicz, Williams, Steffen, &Crutzen, 2010).

1.1 | What is the relevance of climatechange to humans?

Climate change has exerted selection pressures onhominins (subfamily Hominini) throughout human evo-lution (Behrensmeyer, 2006; Levin, 2015; Stanley, 1992).The last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and thegenus Pan (including chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, andbonobos, Pan paniscus) is believed to have speciated as aresult of climate change, namely the reduction in contin-uous forest in Africa due to cooling and drying at the endof the Miocene epoch. Selection pressures on the savannalikely favored new adaptations for foraging and locomo-tion (Moore, 1996). Likewise, the increasing efficiency ofbipedal locomotion in australopithecines (Paranthropusand Australopithecus spp.) is often attributed to a climate-related reduction in gallery forests (see Lieberman, 2014for a review). Climate change may be responsible for thechange in foraging ecology with the transition to thegenus Homo (e.g., increased emphasis on hunted game;Kaplan, Hill, Lancaster, & Hurtado, 2000). Further,climate-related changes in paleoecology around the SinaiPeninsula may have permitted the repeated movementsof Homo species out of and into Africa (Ash &Gallup, 2007). In short, human evolution has beengreatly shaped by climate change; in fact, if we considerthe phylogenetic history of any species alive today, wewill see the products of selection pressures related to cli-mate change.

Climate change continued to be an important selec-tive force for our species, Homo sapiens, over the lastapproximately 300,000 years. During the Pleistoceneepoch, rapid global temperature variation may havefavored complex culture in humans (Richerson &Boyd, 2000). Though the current epoch, the Holocene,has had fewer large-scale fluctuations in global tempera-tures than the Pleistocene, regional or global changes inaverage temperature and precipitation during the Holo-cene have had outsized effects on cultural evolution,including on the emergence of new forms of subsistence(i.e., horticulture, pastoralism, and agriculture) and thepersistence of cities and states (Fagan, 2005; Richerson,Boyd, & Bettinger, 2001). Today, global climate changethreatens billions of people (Xu, Kohler, Lenton,Svenning, & Scheffer, 2020), especially communities liv-ing in poverty (Olsson et al., 2014). For many Indigenouscommunities, climate change is one component of a“total environment of change” (Moerlein &

2 of 11 PISOR AND JONES

Carothers, 2012), including social and economic change,that are altering Indigenous lifeways (Kramer & Hack-man, this issue; Ready & Collings, this issue).

Climate change has always been relevant to humansand our ancestors. As this special issue will demonstrate,the climate community can learn a great deal about adap-tation in the face of climate change by taking a long viewof human history and prehistory.

2 | WHAT IS ADAPTATION?

When the climate community refers to “climate-changeadaptation,” they are usually referring to the changeshumans make in response to or in anticipation of thenegative effects of climate change (IPCC, 2012; Pisor &Jones, this issue). To translate, climate-change adaptationis implicitly cultural adaptation (see Mesoudi, 2016 for areview of the concept), although it is not always clearwho is adapting (e.g., individuals, communities, states) orhow (Jones et al. b, this issue). For example, some in theclimate community suggest that climate-change adapta-tion can be bottom-up, emerging from the actions ofcommunities, or top-down, imposed by governments orinternational organizations (Smit & Wandel, 2006). If westep away from the “climate change” part, the definitionof adaptation in the climate community is tantamount tothe changes humans make (Thornton & Manasfi, 2011).Under this definition, it is unclear what is not adaptation.For example, while some authors are careful to distin-guish adaptation from coping (Pelling, 2010), the Interna-tional Panel on Climate Change offers overlappingdefinitions (Field et al., 2014). Without a clearer concep-tualization of what constitutes climate-change adapta-tion, it is difficult to generate a priori predictions abouthow humans may respond to contemporary climatechange (Pisor & Jones, this issue) and to support commu-nities as they generate their own responses (Jones et al. b,this issue).

Though they may not be aware of their agreement,many anthropological traditions implicitly agree on a def-inition of adaptation: something that manages the risksposed by the environment (Jones et al. b, this issue). ToEBAs, adaptations are phenotypic traits—not just geneti-cally or epigenetically encoded adaptations, but also cul-tural adaptations (for a review, see Jablonka &Lamb, 2014)—that promote fitness by solving the persis-tent problems faced by a lineage of individuals(Lewontin, 1978). Genetically encoded adaptations areoften plastic, with norms of reaction that yield a range ofphenotypes across variable environments; some in theEBA community may call these “physiological adapta-tions” (Stinson, Bogin, O'Rourke, & Huss-Ashmore, 2012)

or “facultative adaptations” (Buss, 2011). Because of thisplasticity, adaptations can often respond to contemporaryenvironmental variability, changing the phenotypeaccordingly, if this variability was also experienced by anindividual's ancestors (Kuzawa & Bragg, 2012). Thougharchaeologists have at times been wary of the word“adaptation” (Kohler & Rockman, 2020), many have dis-cussed the strategies humans use to manage risks(Braun & Plog, 1982; Halstead & O'Shea, 1982, 1989;Minc & Smith, 1989; Minnis, 1985; O'Shea, 1981;Spielmann, 1986). Indeed, a menu of risk-managementstrategies introduced by archaeologists (Halstead &O'Shea, 1982, 1989) later found its way into manuscriptsabout climate-change adaptation written by environmen-tal anthropologists and a political scientist(Agrawal, 2010; Thornton & Manasfi, 2011). Further, sev-eral traditions in cultural anthropology, including cul-tural ecology, ecological anthropology, andenvironmental anthropology, largely agree that adapta-tion is inherently about managing environmental risks(Crate, 2011; Moran, 2018; Sutton & Anderson, 2014;Vayda & McCay, 1975).

While anthropological consensus usefully narrowsthe definition of climate-change adaptation, two impor-tant discrepancies remain. First, is there any precedentfor anticipatory adaptation in humans? While humansand other generalist species exhibit substantial pheno-typic plasticity in response to environmental conditions,there is general consensus among evolutionists, includingEBAs, that natural selection is not anticipatory and willnot favor adaptations to future conditions never experi-enced by an individual or its ancestors (Gould &Vrba, 1982). Cultural ecologists, ecological anthropolo-gists, and archaeologists largely agree. Should we thenexpect humans to be any good at developing andimplementing anticipatory cultural adaptations to futureclimate change, as the climate community suggestshumans can? Second, who or what adapts to climatechange? When we talk about adaptation, are we talkingabout genetically encoded adaptations that successfullymanaged the risks posed by past climate change(Richerson et al., 2001)? Are we talking about individualresponses to climate change via phenotypic plasticity, beit behavioral (including traits adopted through culturaltransmission) or biological? Are we talking aboutcommunity-level or population-level adaptations to cli-mate change that arise through local innovation and/orspread via cultural practices from other communities orpopulations? To productively narrow what is meant by“climate-change adaptation” such that researchers canmake and test explicit predictions about the risk-management strategies humans will use in the face ofcontemporary climate change, these discrepancies in

PISOR AND JONES 3 of 11

meaning must be resolved. (See Jones et al. b, this issue,for further discussion.)

2.1 | The biological definition ofadaptation

When EBAs talk about adaptation, both in this specialissue and in general, the concept is used as both a noun(adaptation) and as a verb (adapting; see Glossary). As anoun, an adaptation refers to an aspect of the phenotypethat manages risks posed by the environment (Joneset al. b, this issue). It is an outcome of the verb form: pro-cess of adapting. Per Ernst Mayr's (1997) conception ofnatural selection as “non-random elimination,” adapta-tions ultimately work to minimize the risk of zeros insurvival and reproduction—that is, the risk of failing toreproduce (Price & Jones, 2020). At a proximate level,however, adaptations work on other currencies studiedby EBAs and other social scientists such as subsistence(Bliege Bird & Bird, this issue; Hazel et al., this issue;Kramer & Hackman, this issue; this issue; Ready & Col-lins, this issue), social capital (Douglass & Rasolondrainy,this issue; Hazel, this issue; Pisor & Jones, this issue;Scaggs et al., this issue), household income, and happi-ness or satisfaction (Price & Jones, 2020). Adaptationscan be transmitted from individual to individual bygenetic, epigenetic, or cultural pathways. Accordingly, anadaptation is something that exists at the individualrather than at the population level. (When EBAs talkabout “populations,” we usually are referring to a groupof people who intermarry, consistent with the use of theterm in evolutionary demography; see Glossary.) How-ever, when we think of the verb form of the concept, itdenotes the process of adapting (Lewontin, 1978).Adapting occurs at the population level as adaptive vari-ants increase in relative frequency because they helpmanage environmental risk and thus are favored byselection. This selection—essentially feedback betweenthe phenotype and the environment—can be natural orcultural selection.

Most EBAs hold that behavioral adaptations are notanticipatory. Anthropologists generally agree thathumans have the phenotypic traits we have becausethese traits helped individuals, whether in the distant orrecent past, manage the risks posed by their environment(Douglass & Rasolondrainy, this issue; Jones et al. b, thisissue). Though environmental conditions in the futuremay reflect past conditions, given human evolutionaryhistory has been molded by climate change (Section 1.1),this is no guarantee---especially given humans havegreatly altered the quantity of our energy use and giventhe rapidity of contemporary climate change (Pontzer,

this issue). That said, while anthropologists generallyagree that adaptations are designed to respond to condi-tions faced by our genetic or cultural ancestors, we donot think humans are helpless when it comes toresponding to novel challenges. First, cultural adaptationcan happen quickly, even across the span of days orweeks, as a behavioral adaptation increases in frequency;this process has only been accelerated by mass communi-cation (Acerbi, 2019; Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981).When presented with a novel challenge, an individualmay copy behavioral adaptations from others that areconsistent with their existing cultural knowledge(Sperber, 1985) or that appear to avoid costs they mayface (Fessler, Pisor, & Navarrete, 2014). Second, humanshave the genetic adaptations to actively design culturaladaptations: adaptation and agency are not opposites(Smith, 2013; Smith & Wishnie, 2000). In short, whileadaptations are not anticipatory, humans can be quiteresponsive to novel challenges, generating new candidateadaptations that can spread rapidly through the popula-tion. Promoting diversity in and among communitieswithin that population will in turn increase the diversityof candidate adaptations, providing individuals with amenu of options to selectively adopt and transmit (Joneset al. b, this issue).

If each adaptation has a function which serves tomanage risk, we must distinguish what an adaptation isfor from what it does. Adaptations spread in populationsbecause they helped individuals manage environmentalrisks in the past; that means that today they may functiondifferently if environments have changed, generatingnovel benefits (Gould & Vrba, 1982) or costs (Bradyet al., 2019). Failing to distinguish current outcomes fromoriginal function is a "functionalist trap," a fallacy towhich the climate community, and even some EBAs, aresusceptible (Ensminger, 1994). EBAs have a toolkitdevoted to figuring out what adaptations were for whenthey evolved, from observing an adaptation today andmodeling how it would respond to a past environment, tomodeling how an adaptation would respond to a pastenvironment and observing today whether an adaptationmatches the model, to comparing adaptations from dif-ferent species (genetic adaptations) or cultures (culturaladaptations) to infer what features of local environmentsthey are responding to (Sterelny & Griffiths, 1999). Wemay find it easier to illustrate the difference betweenwhat an adaptation is for and what it does, and to thusdemonstrate the utility of our toolkit, by using the con-cept of “maladaptation.” When a formerly adaptive traitgenerates more novel costs than novel benefits, both theclimate community and EBAs focus on what the traitdoes rather than what it is for; both communities callthese traits maladaptations (Brady et al., 2019; United

4 of 11 PISOR AND JONES

Nations Environment Program, 2019). By emphasizinghow studying the design properties of traits can help usdistinguish adaptation from maladaptation, and thus“for” from “does,” we can enhance our ability to commu-nicate with the climate community and thus to generatepolicy impacts. (See also Jones et al. b, this issue.)

3 | ANTHROPOLOGISTS' WORK ISRELEVANT FOR UNDERSTANDINGCLIMATE-CHANGE ADAPTATION

As highlighted by the articles in this special issue, thereare many domains in which EBAs have a theoreticalapproach, expertise, and data relevant to larger conversa-tions about human responses to climate change. Byshowcasing our archaeological, laboratory, and field data,EBAs can encourage the climate community not to rein-vent the wheel, but to use existing data (Kohler &Rockman, 2020; Douglass & Cooper, 2020), combinedwith a principled definition of adaptation, to anticipatehow communities will respond to climate change and tosupport them as they do.

One of EBA's most important contributions is ouremphasis on continuity: adapting to climate change isnothing new for humans and may, in fact, be a definingfeature of our genus (Potts, 2012). What is novel is theextent to which our current predicament is self-made, ashuman energy use over the last approximately one mil-lion years precipitated anthropogenic climate changetoday (Pontzer, this issue). For example, EBAs have stud-ied the effects of both past and present climate change onhuman demography, including mobility—that is, a tem-porary or permanent change of residence (Templon et al.,this issue). Whether we are discussing climate change inthe past or today, once changes in the mean or varianceof temperature or precipitation reach a particularthreshold—for example, in terms of their positive auto-correlation or the severity of extreme weather events(Templon et al., this issue; Pisor & Jones, this issue)—individuals respond by moving to a location where theybelieve resources will be more available, either temporar-ily (Bliege Bird & Bird, this issue; Douglass &Rasolondrainy, this issue) or permanently (Templonet al., this issue). Mobility as a behavioral adaptation,including strategies for where to go (Templon et al., thisissue) and whom to visit (Pisor & Jones, this issue), isoften culturally transmitted across generations(Douglass & Rasolondrainy, this issue).

Many human adaptations, not just mobility, functionto maintain resource access. EBAs have both the theoreti-cal framework and the data to make predictions abouthow individuals will maintain this access in the face of

anthropogenic climate change. For example, EBAs oftenstudy how individuals protect against the downsides ofrisk by diversifying their resource portfolios (Otárola-Castillo et al., 2020; Scaggs et al., this issue). Pastoralistswho raise animals that are more resilient to drought havegreater resource security when precipitation falls (Hazelet al., this issue). As predicted by foraging theory, for-agers who are generalists, rather than specialized in aparticular resource, are better able to maintain resourceaccess across different climatic conditions (Otárola-Castillo et al., 2020). Importantly, for individuals to effec-tively reduce the impact of climate change on theirresource access, they must be permitted to use the behav-ioral adaptations they have for maintaining access. For-agers around the globe, both past and present, havemanaged the downsides of climate variability with fire—for example, to drive prey or to modify the landscapesuch that prey are more accessible or easily captured(Bliege Bird & Bird, this issue; Pontzer, this issue). IfIndigenous peoples are not permitted to use their tradi-tional practices to manage risk, they are less well-positioned to cope with contemporary climate change(Bliege Bird & Bird, this issue).

Both in the past and in the present, individuals' socialnetworks have been key to ensuring mobility andresource access given climate variability (Scaggs et al.,this issue; Cashdan, 1985; Kaplan, Hill, & Hurtado, 1990;Wiessner, 1982), and EBAs use our understanding ofhuman sociality to make predictions about the kinds ofnetwork connections individuals will make. While con-nections with kin often help individuals to manage day-to-day variation in production, when faced with longerintervals of wet or dry weather, or cold or hot tempera-tures, individuals often turn to partners with whom theyhave reciprocal sharing relationships (Bird, Bird,Codding, & Zeanah, 2019; Waddell, 1975; Wiessner,1982)—especially if these individuals produce differentresources (Scaggs et al., this issue). Indeed, EBAs predict(and often find) that people prefer social partners whoare unlikely to experience resource shortfalls at the sametime as them; when the experience of shortfalls is notcorrelated across partners, this permits the pooling of risk(Pisor & Jones, this issue; Winterhalder, 1980). In orderto have a network of social partners who are unlikely toexperience correlated shortfalls, individuals may buildconnections both within and between communities(Douglass & Rasolondrainy, this issue; Pisor & Jones, thisissue). Further, social network connections are not onlysources of food or monetary resources, but also of behav-ioral adaptations. Network connections transmit innova-tions for managing the risks posed by climate change(Douglass & Rasolondrainy, this issue; Jones et al. b, thisissue). Importantly, however, even if individuals can

PISOR AND JONES 5 of 11

acquire new adaptations through their social networkconnections, they may not be able to utilize these adapta-tions. Conflicts of interest between members of a house-hold, larger family, or community can preventindividuals from deploying their behavioral adaptationswhen the downsides of climate change strike (Hazelet al., this issue; Templon et al., this issue).

EBAs' work on mobility, resource access, and socialnetworks has import beyond the level of communities,scaling up to regional and even trans-national levels—scales often of interest to members of the climate com-munity. For example, our work on sustainable resourcemanagement and conservation, especially our work oncooperation, collective action, and resource harvesting,has reached broad audiences because local patterns haveglobal consequences (Alvard, Robinson, Redford, &Kaplan, 2003; Borgerhoff Mulder & Coppolillo, 2005;Costanza et al., 1998; Waring et al., 2015). With respect toclimate change, our focus on mobility as an adaptation toenvironmental risks permits us to make a priori predic-tions about when people will leave (Pisor & Jones, thisissue; Templon et al., this issue) and how far they will go(Bliege Bird & Bird, this issue; Douglass &Rasolondrainy, this issue; Pisor & Jones, this issue;Templon et al., this issue), which usually involves mov-ing within a country (Templon et al., this issue) but caninvolve crossing international borders (Wiessner, 1982).Our work on differences in human energy use acrossmodes of production (e.g., foraging, intensive agriculture)can be used to better understand both when anthropo-genic climate change began and individual contributionsto carbon emissions today (Pontzer, this issue). Our theo-retical work on the recurrent structures of human socialnetworks and how they foster and transmit adaptationshas implications for the emergence of climate-changeadaptation on a global scale (Jones et al. b, this issue). Insum, though one of the strengths of anthropology is ourin-depth understanding of dynamics within communi-ties, this understanding scales up to larger patterns ofhuman behavior; EBAs are actively pursuing theseextrapolations and their broader implications.

Though the work done by EBAs has much to offerlarger conversations about climate-change adaptation,our work also offers a caution: when it comes to life onthe ground in the 21st century, climate change is notalways as salient to local stakeholders as it is to the cli-mate community. Climate change refers to increases ordecreases in the mean and/or variance of features of cli-mate, like temperature or precipitation, across decades.For horticulturalists or foragers, variation across seasonsor across years is often more salient than these longer-term trends (Kramer & Hackman, this issue). Further,though climate change often directly affects food

resources, it can also affect the means of production, forexample, by limiting mobility (Pisor & Jones, this issue;Ready & Collings, this issue). Research on climate-change adaptation that ignores other pressing issues com-munities face on a daily basis—the “total environment ofchange” (Moerlein & Carothers, 2012), which includespoverty and legacies of colonialism—risks being both sci-entifically flawed and (at best) irrelevant for local com-munities (Kramer & Hackman, this issue; Ready &Collings, this issue; Scaggs et al., this issue).

Taken together, EBAs often draw on evolutionary the-ory and our knowledge of human evolutionary history tomake a priori predictions about how behavioral adapta-tions function, whether we evaluate these predictions bycollaborating with living peoples or studying the archaeo-logical record. Our theoretical and empirical knowledgebase permits us to forecast how people will respond tocontemporary climate change, including through the stra-tegic use of mobility (e.g., at what thresholds of resourcestress will individuals migrate?), the management of sub-sistence risk (e.g., what resources are individuals likely touse to protect against the downsides of climate change?),and the formation of social capital (e.g., where are the con-nections in an individual's social network likely to live?).Further, we are well-positioned to even make predictionsabout how people will think about climate change, giventhe time scales of climate variability most salient on theground. In short, EBAs have both a theoretical approachand data that would greatly contribute to ongoing conver-sations about climate-change adaptation. Participating inthese conversations, however, requires that we engage inoutreach and make these resources available to the cli-mate community and the general public (Jones et al. a,this issue). It also means that we need to engage with andlisten to the communities with whom we collaborate(Broesch et al., 2020; Kramer & Hackman, this issue;Ready & Collings, this issue).

3.1 | Demonstrating the relevance ofanthropology

Given that EBAs have a theoretical approach and anarray of data relevant to both the climate community andthe general public, how do we reach these stakeholders?Based on the experiences of many of the contributors tothis special issue, in Jones et al. (a, this issue) we makeexplicit recommendations for how to build bridges to theclimate community and the public. We include illustra-tive examples that readers may find useful for increasingtheir engagement and outreach while simultaneously col-laborating with and listening to local, Indigenous, anddescendant communities. To provide a brief teaser here,

6 of 11 PISOR AND JONES

our explicit recommendations include broader publicengagement, including writing public pieces such aspress releases, opinion pieces, and trade publications thatexplain research in terms of a story; collaborating withresearchers in other disciplines, which cultivates our abil-ities to communicate results across boundaries of termi-nology and methodology; and improving diversity,professional mentorship, and networking opportunitiesfor early-career scholars.

4 | CONCLUSION

Climate change is the central challenge of the 21st cen-tury, yet somehow, despite all we know about humanresponses to climate and about adaptation, evolutionaryand biological anthropologists (EBAs) are largely absentfrom conversations about climate-change adaptation andfrom decision-making about how to best support commu-nities vulnerable to climate change. In this article, weestablished what “climate change” and “adaptation”mean, among other terms commonly used by EBAs thatappear throughout this special issue (see Glossary). Wethen reviewed the extent to which climate change hasaffected human evolution and why a biological definitionof adaptation clarifies that (1) adaptation is almost exclu-sively reactive, rather than anticipatory of futureconditions—though reactivity does not imply that indi-viduals are powerless to respond, and to respond quickly,and (2) an adaptation is for a particular function, andEBAs have the toolkit for investigating the functions ofadaptations; what an adaptation does as a byproductshould be a separate consideration. We also provided ashort tour of just a few of the research areas in whichEBAs have much to contribute to the conversation aboutclimate-change adaptation, including our work on energyuse, mobility, subsistence, social networks and culturalchange, and the relevance (or not) of climate change inthe day-to-day life of communities.

Why should EBAs invest the energy to make our workaccessible to stakeholders such as climate researchers,development partners, policymakers, and the general pub-lic? First, given the wide-ranging and profound impacts ofcontemporary climate change, there is perhaps no bettertarget for our applied work. Gibson and Lawson (2014) pro-vide an eloquent argument for why EBAs should considerapplied work as a complement to their other interests. Sec-ond, even though the climate community is alreadymakingpolicy decisions that affect the communities with whom wecollaborate—communities that are often among the mostvulnerable to the downsides of climate change—few of usare bringing what we know about these communities to thetable to help inform decision-making on the part of local,

regional, or national governments, policy think tanks, orintergovernmental institutions charged with responding toclimate change. Assuming the communities with whom wecollaborate agree that we can share their data and stories,or the data and stories of their ancestors, we need onlybuild the bridge so that our empirical work and ideas canreach climate change stakeholders (see Jones et al. a, thisissue, for tips on how to do so). EBAs will then be betterpositioned to help support communities vulnerable to cli-mate change as they cope.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThanks to Rebecca Bliege Bird, Kristina Douglass,Elspeth Ready, Mary Towner, and an anonymousreviewer for comments on this manuscript. A specialshout-out to the babies born during the production of thisspecial issue to the Gerkey, Otárola-Castillo, and Pisorfamilies. Open access funding enabled and organized byProjekt DEAL. Open access funding enabled and orga-nized by Projekt DEAL.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONSAnne C. Pisor: Conceptualization and Writing - OriginalDraft Preparation. James Jones: Conceptualization;writing-review and editing.

GLOSSARY TO THE SPECIAL ISSUEActor: An individual, group, community, culture, ornation-state with some degree of autonomy for decision-making regarding its welfare. In the climate science liter-ature, researchers often do not specify whether adapta-tions (see Adaptation) exist at the level of the individualor the community. Accordingly, we use “actor” to specifythat the entity in question can be anything from an indi-vidual to a nation-state.

Adaptation, as a noun: A phenotypic trait (see Pheno-type) that imbues its bearer a higher probability of rep-roducing itself than the bearers of other phenotypic traitsin a particular environment at a particular time. In otherwords, if a given trait is more effective than are othertraits at managing the downsides and/or upsides of a riskposed by a particular environment at a particular time,the actors carrying the adaptation are more likely toreproduce themselves, and thus reproduce the trait, thanactors that do not carry it (Section 2; see Actor, Selection).We then call that trait an adaptation.

Adapt, as a verb: The process by which adaptationsincrease in frequency in a population through selection—in other words, the process by which actors become bettersuited to their environments (Section 2; see Evolution,Population).

Anthropogenic climate change: Climate change attrib-utable to human behavior; a number of other processes

PISOR AND JONES 7 of 11

have also generated climate change across Earth's history(Section 1; see Climate change).

Climate change: Regional or global changes in the dis-tributional features (usually the mean or variance) of cli-mate variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation, extremeweather events) through time (Section 1).

Demography: The size, dynamics, and composition ofpopulations across time; the processes that generate thesechanges, the foci of study for demographers, are usually“vital events”: birth, death, mobility (see Mobility andmigration), and marriage.

Evolution: Change in the frequencies of differentcharacteristics through time. The characteristics can bemorphological, physiological, or behavioral (see Pheno-type) and transmitted culturally, epigenetically, orgenetically.

Horticulture: A subsistence (see Subsistence) patternin which households grow domesticated plants withoutirrigation or plows, often accompanied by the husbandryof small domesticated animals (e.g., pigs, chickens). Alsocalled “slash and burn farming” or “shifting cultivation”because horticulturalists cycle through the same plotsacross years, cutting down and burning foliage to replen-ish nitrogen levels in the soil.

Mobility and migration: Although the terms are some-times used interchangeably, demographers and EBAsusually use migration to refer to a permanent change inresidence and mobility to refer to a temporary change inresidence (e.g., “migrant labor” is actually closer tomobility than to migration). In the present article, we use“mobility” and clarify whether this is short-term mobility(a temporary change in residence) or long-term mobility(a permanent change in residence).

Niche construction: An evolutionary process charac-terized by feedback between an actor and its environ-ment such that the actor modifies its environment, eitheractively (e.g., by constructing a structure like a hive or abuilding) or passively (e.g., distributing seeds by eatingfruit and passing seeds through the digestive system), andthese changes to the environment in turn exert selectionpressures on the actor.

Pastoralism: A subsistence pattern in which house-holds raise domesticated herd animals as their primarysource of food and/or cash income. The consumption ofmilk, blood, and occasionally meat is supplemented byplant products, which households obtain by trade or bymaintaining small gardens.

Phenotype: A trait (see Trait) carried by an actor onwhich selection (see Selection) can act directly; this directaction distinguishes a phenotype from a genotype.

Population: A group of individuals that intermarry(or, more broadly, that reproduce together).

Risk: A decision is said to carry risk if its outcome isvariable. Risks are often described with the metaphor of alottery: outcomes are paid out according to some probabi-listic process and involve both upsides and downsides.

Selection: Selection includes cultural and naturalselection. It refers to the ability of some inherited charac-teristics to reproduce themselves better than others in aparticular environment at a particular time (see Adapta-tion, Adapt, and Evolution). Note that our use of “selec-tion” here differs from cohort selection, which occursthrough attrition or differential frailty. Unlike natural orcultural selection, cohort selection does not includereproduction and subsequent amplification of character-istics better fit to the environment in a particular placeand time.

Social capital: The sum total of resources in theirsocial network (see Social network) that an actor canmobilize for instrumental action.

Social network: The aggregate of the social relation-ships of an actor.

Subsistence: How an actor obtains its food.Trait: A quantifiable measurement of an actor.

ORCIDAnne C. Pisor https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5780-4542James H. Jones https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1680-6757

ENDNOTE1 https://medium.com/matter/it-s-not-climate-change-it-s-everything-change-8fd9aa671804.

REFERENCESAcerbi, A. (2019). Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age. Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press.Agrawal, A. (2010). Local institutions and adaptation to climate

change. In R. Mearns & A. Norton (Eds.), Social Dimensions ofClimate Change: Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World(pp. 173–198). Washington, DC: The World Bank. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785365119.00009

Alvard, M. S., Robinson, J. G., Redford, K. H., & Kaplan, H. (2003).The sustainability of subsistence hunting in the Neotropics.Conservation Biology, 11(4), 977–982. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-1739.1997.96047.x

Ash, J., & Gallup, G. G. (2007). Paleoclimatic variation and brainexpansion during human evolution. Human Nature, 18(2),109–124.

Behrensmeyer, A. K. (2006). Climate change and human evolution.Science, 311(5760), 476–478. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1116051

Bird, D. W., Bird, R. B., Codding, B. F., & Zeanah, D. W. (2019).Variability in the organization and size of hunter-gatherergroups: Foragers do not live in small-scale societies. Journal ofHuman Evolution, 131, 96–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.03.005

8 of 11 PISOR AND JONES

Borgerhoff Mulder, M., & Coppolillo, P. (2005). Conservation.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Brady, S. P., Bolnick, D. I., Angert, A. L., Gonzalez, A.,Barrett, R. D. H., Crispo, E., … Hendry, A. P. (2019). Causes ofmaladaptation. Evolutionary Applications, 12(7), 1229–1242.https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.12844

Braun, D. P., & Plog, S. (1982). Evolution of “tribal” social net-works: Theory and prehistoric North American evidence.American Antiquity, 47(3), 504–525. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1961.63.5.02a00100

Broesch, T., Crittenden, A. N., Beheim, B., Blackwell, A. D.,Bunce, J., Colleran, H., & Hagel, K. (2020). Navigating cross-cultural research: methodological and ethical considerations.PsyArXiv, 287, 20201245. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/thqsw

Buss, D. (2011). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of theMind. New York, NY: Pearson.

Cashdan, E. (1985). Coping with risk: Reciprocity among theBasarwa of Northern Botswana. Man, 20(3), 454–474.

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Feldman, M. W. (1981). Cultural transmis-sion and evolution: A quantitative approach (Vol. 16). Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press.

Costanza, R., Andrade, F., Antunes, P., Belt, d., van, M.,Boersma, D., … Young, M. (1998). Principles for SustainableGovernance of the Oceans. Science, 281(5374), 198–199. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.281.5374.198

Crate, S. A. (2011). Climate and culture: Anthropology in the era ofcontemporary climate change. Annual Review of Anthropology,2(40), 175–194.

Cronin, T. M. (2009). Paleoclimates: Understanding Climate ChangePast and Present. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Douglass, K., & Cooper, J. (2020). Archaeology, environmental jus-tice, and climate change on islands of the Caribbean and south-western Indian Ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences of the United States of America, 117(15), 8254–8262.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1914211117

Ensminger, J. (1994). The political economy of religion: An eco-nomic anthropologist's perspective. Journal of Institutional andTheoretical Economics (JITE) / Zeitschrift Für Die GesamteStaatswissenschaft, 150(4), 745–754.

Fagan, B. (2005). The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civiliza-tion. London, UK: Grants Books.

Fessler, D. M. T., Pisor, A. C., & Navarrete, C. D. (2014). Negatively-biased credulity and the cultural evolution of beliefs. PLoS ONE,9(4), e95167. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095167

Field, C. B., Barros, V. R., Mach, K. J., & Mastrandrea, M. D. (2014).Technical summary. In Climate Change 2014:Impacts,Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sec-toral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the FifthAssessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (pp. 35–94). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-TS_FINAL.pdf

Fletcher, B. J., Brentnall, S. J., Anderson, C. W., Berner, R. A., &Beerling, D. J. (2008). Atmospheric carbon dioxide linked withMesozoic and early Cenozoic climate change. Nature Geosci-ence, 1(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo.2007.29

Gibson, M. A., & Lawson, D. W. (Eds.). (2014). Applied EvolutionaryAnthropology: Darwinian Approaches to Contemporary WorldIssues. New York, NY: Springer Publishing.

Gould, S. J., & Vrba, E. S. (1982). Exaptation - a missing term in thescience of form. Paleobiology, 8(1), 4–15.

Halstead, P., & O'Shea, J. (1982). A friend in need is a friend indeed:Social storage and the origins of social ranking. In C. Renfrew &S. Shennan (Eds.), Ranking, Resource and Exchange (pp. 92–99).Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Halstead, P., & O'Shea, J. (1989). Introduction: Cultural responsesto risk and uncertainty. In P. Halstead & J. O'Shea (Eds.), BadYear Economics: Cultural Responses to Risk and Uncertainty(pp. 1–7). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

IPCC (2012). Glossary of terms. In C. B. Field, V. Barros, T. F.Stocker, D. Qin, D. J. Dokken, K. L. Ebi, et al. (Eds.), Managingthe Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance ClimateChange Adaptation (pp. 555–564). Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Jablonka, E., & Lamb, M. J. (2014). Evolution in four dimensions,revised edition: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic vari-ation in the history of life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kaplan, H., Hill, K., & Hurtado, A. M. (1990). Risk, foraging, andfood sharing among the ache. In E. Cashadan (Ed.), Risk anduncertainty in tribal and peasant societies (pp. 107–143). Boul-der, CO: Westview Press.

Kaplan, H., Hill, K., Lancaster, J., & Hurtado, A. M. (2000). A the-ory of human life history evolution: Diet, intelligence, and lon-gevity. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 9(4), 156–185. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6505(2000)9:4<156::AID-EVAN5>3.3.CO;2-Z

Kohler, T. A., & Rockman, M. (2020). The IPCC: A primer forarchaeologists. (n.d.). American Antiquity, 85(4), 627–651.https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2020.68.

Kramer, K. L., & Hackman, J. (in press). Scaling climate change tohuman behavior predicting good and bad years for Mayafarmers. American Journal of Human Biology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23524.

Kuzawa, C. W., & Bragg, J. M. (2012). Plasticity in humanlife history strategy: Implications for contemporary humanvariation and the evolution of genus Homo. CurrentAnthropology, 53(Suppl. 6), S369–S382. https://doi.org/10.1086/667410

Levin, N. E. (2015). Environment and Climate of Early Human Evo-lution. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 43(1),405–429. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-060614-105310

Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. A. (2015). Defining the Anthropocene.Nature, 519(7542), 171–180. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258

Lewontin, R. C. (1978). Adaptation. Scientific American, 239(9),212–230. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0978-212

Lieberman, D. (2014). The Story of the Human Body: Evolution,Health, and Disease. New York, NY: Vintage.

Mayr, E. (1997). The objects of selection. Proceeding of the NationalAcademies of Sciences, 94(6), 2091–2094. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.6.2091

Mesoudi, A. (2016). Cultural evolution: A review of theory, findingsand controversies. Evolutionary Biology, 43, 481–497. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11692-015-9320-0

Minc, L. D., & Smith, K. P. (1989). The spirit of survival: culturalresponses to resource variability in North Alaska. In P.Halsread & J. O'Shea (Eds.), Bad Year Economics: CulturalResponses to Risk and Uncertainty (pp. 8–39). Cambridge, UK:

PISOR AND JONES 9 of 11

Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521218.003

Minnis, P. E. (1985). Social Adaptation to Food Stress: A PrehistoricSouthwestern Example. Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress.

Moerlein, K. J., & Carothers, C. (2012). Total Environment ofChange: Impacts of Climate Change and Social Transi-tions on Subsistence Fisheries in Northwest Alaska. Ecol-ogy and Society, 17(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.5751/es-04543-170110

Moore, J. (1996). Savanna chimpanzees, referential models and thelast common ancestor. In W. C. McGrew, L. F. Marchant, & T.Nishida (Eds.), Great Ape Societies (p. 275). Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press.

Moran, E. F. (2018). Human Adaptability: An Introduction to Eco-logical Anthropology. New York, NY: Routledge.

Olsson, L., Opondo, M., Tschakert, P., Agrawal, A., Eriksen, S. H.,Ma, S., … Zakieldeen, S. A. (2014). Livelihoods and poverty. InC. B. Field, V. R. Barros, D. J. Dokken, K. J. Mach, M. D.Mastrandrea, T. E. Bilir, et al. (Eds.), Climate Change 2014:Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sec-toral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the FifthAssessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (pp. 793–832). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress.

O'Shea, J. (1981). Coping with scarcity: Exchange and social stor-age. In A. Sheridan & G. Bailey (Eds.), Economic Archaeology:Towards an Integration of Ecological and Social Approaches(B.A.R. Int, pp. 167–181). Oxford, UK: B.A.R.

Otárola-Castillo, E., Torquato, M. G., & Hill, M. E. (2020). Intensifi-cation mechanisms driving dietary change among the GreatPlains big game hunters of North America. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xptby.

Pelling, M. (2010). Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilienceto Transformation. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis.

Pisor, A. C., & Jones, J. H. (in press). Do people manage climate riskthrough long-distance relationships?. American Journal ofHuman Biology, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23525.

Potts, R. (2012). Evolution and Environmental Change in EarlyHuman Prehistory. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41(1),151–167. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145754

Price, M. H., & Jones, J. H. (2020). Fitness-maximizers employ pes-simistic probability weighting for decisions under risk. Evolu-tionary Human Sciences, 2, e28. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.28

Ready, E., & Collings, P. (in press). All the problems in the commu-nity are multifaceted and related to each other”: Inuit concernsin an era of climate change. American Journal of Human Biol-ogy. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23516.

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2000). Climate, culture, and the evolu-tion of cognition. In C. Heyes & L. Huber (Eds.), Evolution ofcognition (pp. 329–346). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Richerson, P. J., Boyd, R., & Bettinger, R. L. (2001). Was agricultureimpossible during the Pleistocene but mandatory during theHolocene? A climate change hypothesis. American Antiquity,66(3), 387–411.

Rosenzweig, C., Karoly, D., Vicarelli, M., Neofotis, P., Wu, Q.,Casassa, G., … Imeson, A. (2008). Attributing physical and

biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change. Nature,453(7193), 353–357. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06937

Scaggs, S., Gerkey, D., & McLaughlin, K. (n.d.). Linking subsistenceharvest diversity and productivity to adaptive capacity in an Alas-kan food sharing network.

Smit, B., & Wandel, J. (2006). Adaptation, adaptive capacity andvulnerability. Global Environmental Change, 16(3), 282–292.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.03.008

Smith, E. A. (2013). Agency and Adaptation: New Directions inEvolutionary Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), 103–120. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155447

Smith, E. A., & Wishnie, M. (2000). Conservation and subsistencein small-scale societies. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29(2000), 493–524. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.493

Sperber, D. (1985). Anthropology and psychology: Towards an epi-demiology of representations. Man, 20(1), 73–89.

Spielmann, K. A. (1986). Interdependence among egalitarian socie-ties. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 5, 279–312.

Stanley, S. M. (1992). An ecological theory for the origin of Homo.Paleobiology, 18(3), 237–257. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0094837300010836

Sterelny, K., & Griffiths, P. E. (1999). Sex and Death: An Introduc-tion to the Philosophy of Biology. Chicago, IL: University of Chi-cago Press.

Stinson, S., Bogin, B., O'Rourke, D. H., & Huss-Ashmore, R. (2012).Human biology: An evolutionary and biocultural perspective.In S. Stinson, B. Bogin, & D. H. O'Rourke (Eds.), Human Biol-ogy: An Evolutionary and Biocultural Perspective (pp. 3–22).Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Sutton, M. Q., & Anderson, E. N. (2014). Introduction to CulturalEcology. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

Thornton, T. F., & Manasfi, N. (2011). Adaptation—Genuine andSpurious: Demystifying Adaptation Processes in Relation to Cli-mate Change. Environment and Society, 1(1), 132–155. https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2010.010107

United Nations Environment Program (2019). Maladaptation to cli-mate change: Avoiding pitfalls on the evolvability pathway. InFrontiers 2018/19 Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern(pp. 66–76). Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Environment Pro-gram. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/27545/Frontiers1819_ch5.pdf

Vayda, A. P., & McCay, B. J. (1975). New directions in ecology andecological anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 4(1),293–306. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.04.100175.001453

Waddell, E. (1975). How the Enga cope with frost: Responses to cli-matic perturbations in the Central Highlands of New Guinea.Human Ecology, 3(4), 249–273.

Waring, T. M., Kline, M. A., Brooks, J. S., Goff, S. H., Gowdy, J.,Janssen, M. A., … Jacquet, J. (2015). A multilevel evolutionaryframework for sustainability analysis. Ecology and Society, 20(2), 34. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07634-200234

Wiessner, P. (1982). Risk, reciprocity and social influences on !KungSan economics. In Politics and History in Band Societies(pp. 61–84). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Winterhalder, B. (1980). Environmental analysis in human evolu-tion and adaptation research. Human Ecology, 8(2), 135–170.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01531439

10 of 11 PISOR AND JONES

Xu, C., Kohler, T. A., Lenton, T. M., Svenning, J.-C., & Scheffer, M.(2020). Future of the human climate niche. Proceedings of theNational Academies of Sciences, 117(21), 11350–11355. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910114117

Zalasiewicz, J. A. N., Williams, M., Steffen, W., & Crutzen, P. (2010).The new world of the anthropocene. Environmental Science andTechnology, 44(7), 2228–2231. https://doi.org/10.1021/es903118j

How to cite this article: Pisor AC, Jones JH.Human adaptation to climate change: Anintroduction to the special issue. Am J Hum Biol.2020;e23530. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23530

PISOR AND JONES 11 of 11